


The Hawk and the Bat

by sevenofspade



Category: DCU - Comicverse, Marvel 616
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 09:10:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/733981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/pseuds/sevenofspade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stephanie Brown's fight with gravity carries on into the next universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hawk and the Bat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amathela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amathela/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this. I had great fun writing it.

The first thing Stephanie thinks as she finds herself floating in the nothing beyond creation is, _that’s rude_.

Seriously, though? Expelling a girl from her own universe, just like that? No goodbye, no thank you, no nothing? Miss Manners would like a word with you, universe.

There’s nothing but endless white as far as the eye can see. For some reason, she finds herself thinking of mirrors and what happens when you line up two of them so they reflect each other. Maybe it’s because that’s what she was doing before the - let’s call it a reality wave - hit or maybe it’s because, far away into the light, she can see tiny figures, billions upon billions of them, reflecting her every move. 

Maybe the villain she'd been fighting had made this happen. But it doesn't fit his M.O. of possession through reflection. He’d only been able to move through reflective surfaces. Hence, the mirror finagling. She hopes she got the bastard. 

All that’s left for her to do is find her way back into her universe. Easier said than done, Batgirl. 

She can’t even get up, because there’s no gravity (Stephanie: 1, Gravity: 0). 

She drifts for a while. Or at least, she thinks she drifts, because the alternative is that she stays in the exact same place for 12+ hours, and that’s just depressing. Then there’s a flare, off in the distance. A flash of golden energy that feels the same as the reality wave did. 

Try as she might, and she is very good at trying, Steph can’t get there before the flare fades. In its place or close enough is a tiny crack; the kind you sometimes get in old mirrors, where you can see the crack but not feel it, because only the mirror is cracked and not the glass. Or something. Stephanie doesn’t spend terribly long looking at mirrors. 

She rotate-floats around it and it always looks the same. That’s creepy. 

And again nothing happens, twice. She really regrets not getting Barbara or Wendy to download _some_ entertainment into the suit’s micro-computer. 

Suddenly,  the reality-wave-like feeling grips Stephanie again. The crack shines blue a moment later. It widens and tears as brilliant blue light pours out into the void. 

Stephanie, never one to fear where angels don’t tread, rushes in. 

Something, or maybe two somethings, slimy, eldritch and intangible, brush alongside her as she does. She shivers and falls head first into the night. 

_Point to gravity_ , she thinks as the wind whistles in her ears. (Stephanie: 1, Gravity: 1) 

She shoots her grapple at a passing building. It breaks through a window but holds. She swings down to the ground. 

The skyline is new. There’s a building with a sort of epileptic spider on the top and yep, that’s definitely the Empire State Building behind it. 

Okay, so New York, not Gotham. She can work with that. 

But first, recon. 

There’s an open 24/7 shop across the street, but she doesn’t have civilian clothes. Can she claim costume party gone wrong? Yes, she can. 

Luckily, the clerk behind the counter is human and doesn’t seem to be evil or possessed, so that’s good. 

“Can I help you?” she asks, seemingly not surprised to see a costume vigilante in her shop. 

Stephanie has money in her belt. “Where are your clothes? I’ve had a bit of a mishap with my costume.” 

The clerk just points over the top of her magazine. Stephanie goes to the aisle being pointed at and picks the baggiest hoodie and pair of pants she can. The pants are purple. On the hoodie is a picture of people in brightly coloured costumes reading “New York, Home of the Avengers”. The Avengers, (she supposes), are standing in front of a skyline that still contains the World Trade Center. No wonder it’s so cheap. 

She moves to the register and shit, does her money even work in this universe? 

She fakes a Canadian accent and shows the clerk her bills, “Are those valid US dollars? I can never tell.” 

The clerk looks at the bills. “Yeah, they’re good. You with Alpha Flight?” 

Yes? No? Maybe? I don’t know? What’s Alpha Flight? She settles on, “Just started! How much for the clothes?” 

“Keep it,” the clerk says. “Getting stuck without civvies when you’re on patrol sucks.” 

Steph decides not to question her good luck. She puts on the pants and hoodie over her Batgirl uniform and takes off her cowl. She has a serious case of cowl hair, the suit’s batteries are running very low, she’s tired, she’s hungry, she’s stuck in another universe but things are looking up. 

She walks around until the finds an hotel that claims to have free wifi, free electricity (no, for real, it says so on the front) and the best free all-you-can-eat breakfast in Hell’s Kitchen, all for 9.99$ a night or 19.99$ a week. 

There’s no one behind the counter when she comes in. She rings the bell and sits down in the waiting area. And wait she does. It seems to be a running theme in her life lately. Oh, well, there are magazines this time. 

When she’s finished reading the last magazine (“IS MATT MURDOCK DAREDEVIL? Read inside to find out!!!!! Also featuring pictures of Johnny Storm’s latest affair!!!”), she starts on the brochures. Shut up, this totally counts as recon work. 

She’s halfway through a brochure for X-Factor Investigations, when the hotel manager shows up. He just will not shut up about the hotel manager and it really gets on Stephanie’s nerves. 

“I’d like a room for a week,” she says, cutting through his babble. “Starting tomorrow night.” It’s already dawn and no way is she letting anyone rip her off, new universe or no. 

The manager looks like he wants to argue, but Steph does her best Bruce-Wayne-as-Batman-on-a-bad-day impersonation and he quickly relents. 

As soon as he goes back to whatever he was doing in the backroom (and Stephanie is not touching that thought with a ten-foot pole) she travels to the breakfast room and makes herself some coffee. The room is empty, breakfast probably won’t be set up for another hour, so she discreetly plugs her suit into the wall socket. 

Okay, so. Here’s her situation: her money, all 80,01$ of it, is valid, room and food for the next week is taken care off, she’s in a universe where neither Gotham nor Metropolis exists or even most of the cities she associates with capes, she has no idea what happened to the people back home, there are potentially things from outside reality roaming around New York and people think she’s with Alpha Flight. She can work with that. 

Yesterday’s papers are still in the bin. She fishes one out. Today is the first day of Spring and the job page has a couple of offers looking for unqualified workers. Steph is pretty sure three fourths of a degree at a university that doesn’t exist do not qualifications make. None of the detective agencies are a good option, the last thing she wants is someone good at finding secrets poking around her life. She hasn’t got the knowledge to be a field trip guide, so it’ll have to be stacking books at the library for some university she’s never heard off. Con: she really hates alphabetising. Pro: a regular wage and maybe she’ll be able to finish her degree. Interviews start at seven. If she leaves now, she can be there in time. 

On her way there (yay free tourist maps), a man in red and blue swings overhead. He doesn’t have a grapple and it looks like he’s somehow producing whatever it is he’s swinging from. Okay, then. 

She’ll get the job if she can start right away. Add the first month of salary upfront and it’s a deal. 

The library is missing the entire back wall and it doesn’t look like it’s the first time, either. Can she ask for a hazard pay? 

The work is long and exhausting and involves more pushing of broken masonry pieces than book shelving. On the way back to the hotel, she buys herself normal clothes, underwear, toiletries, food and a phone. 

Weeks pass. Each day on her way back from work, she takes a different route, learning the city with her boots. 

On the first day of Summer, she becomes Batgirl again. 

It doesn’t take long for her to find trouble. A man in a Jersey U jacket is mugging a blind man. She drops out of the sky and knocks him out. His eyes, for the smallest of instants, have a silver sheen to them. It’s just her imagination. Must be. No way the mirror villain followed her through the void. 

“Who are you?” the blind man asks. He has red hair and a white cane, which is how she knew he was blind in the first place. “Because you’re not Daredevil and you’re certainly not Spiderman.” 

“I’m the goddamn Batgirl,” she says, catching herself at the last minute. She takes off. It feels good being on patrol again, but New York isn’t Gotham and she misses Proxy and Oracle. She misses the voices in her head, how weird is that? 

Hell’s Kitchen might be right next door to Mutant Town and the Baxter Building, but there are practically no metas in it. There’s Luke Cage, possibly his wife and Iron Fist. Does Iron Fist count as a meta? His hands glow but his technique looks like stuff Cass could do. (Cass will be okay. She can handle anything the universe throws at her.) 

She meets Daredevil, once. 

“So, you’re the goddamn Batgirl,” he says. There’s something familiar about the way he says it, but she’s been introducing herself as such every time she was asked. 

“The one and only,” she says. Her heart pinches a little. She never used to be the one and only, Cass and Babs were always there before her. 

“You’re good,” he says, and that’s new. She’s still not used to people accepting her as Batgirl. It’s a nice feeling, not having people tell her she’s not good enough. 

“Thanks, you’re not bad either.” He has an easy grace than reminds her of Dick. 

“Does the name Simulacrum mean anything to you?” he says. 

It’s the name of the mirror villain from back home. Just a coincidence, Steph, nothing to worry about. “No.” 

A couple of weeks after that, she meets Hawkeye, who is very insistent that she isn’t Hawk _guy_ , because there’s also a guy named Hawkeye, but it’s not her. Hawkeye wears purple and that endears her immediately to Stephanie. 

“How do you feel about waffles?” Hawkeye asks and suddenly Stephanie has a new best friend in this universe. 

A best friend who knows an amazing place for cheap waffles. Stephanie’ll have to remember the address for when she’s not in costume. 

“How’d you know where to find me?” Steph asks. Hawkeye is paying for the waffles. Apparently, she has a tab. Waffles _and_ a tab? How much more awesome can this place get? 

Hawkeye has one waffle on her plate. Who only eats one waffle at three a.m.? Waffles at three a.m. is an all or nothing game and Steph plays to win. 

“Daredevil told me,” Hawkeye says. “He dresses in red and has horns on his head.” 

Steph nods. “I know who he is. Why would he tell you to take me out for waffles? No that I mind,” she adds hurriedly, seeing her beloved waffles running off with Hawkeye’s wallet. 

“He thinks you’re a villain,” Hawkeye says. 

Steph chokes on her waffles. No one’s ever accused her of being a villain before. “Why?” 

“A recent rise of muggings committed by people with silver eyes that started when you did,” Hawkeye answers. 

Okay, yeah, when you put it like that, it does sound a bit like she’s responsible. And Hawkeye doesn’t look like the kind of person who would hesitate to take her down if she was, not even over waffles. “This is going to sound unbelievable,” Steph starts. 

“Try me,” Hawkeye says. 

“I’m from another universe and Simulacrum followed me here from there and I don’t know how to go home and I’m not a villain I swear and also I think I know how to take it down,” Steph gets out in a rush. She finishes her waffle. 

And then starts on the next one, while Hawkeye picks apart what she just said. 

Hawkeye has a great poker face. “So,” she finally says, “team-up?” 

_Hell yes._

Hawkeye is filthy rich, like Bruce Wayne levels of rich. It’s the only explanation for how perfect for non-superpowered vigilantes her lair is. She says it’s not a lair, but, whatever, Stephanie knows a lair when she sees one. 

It even has swirly chairs! Steph loves swirly chairs. Loves ‘em. 

“Tell me everything about Simulacrum and how you ended up here,” Hawkeye says. 

“I was on patrol, it was Tuesday afternoon - and I had a test the next day - when Proxy told me about the bank robberies,” Steph begins. 

“Back up. Who’s Proxy?” Hawkeye asks. 

“She’s like Oracle,” Steph says, before realising that this will not enlighten Hawkeye one bit. “She looks at data all day and tells me what to do all night. And she tells me when the Batsignal’s on, so I know people need my help.” 

Hawkeye nods. 

Steph goes on, “So, there’d been those robberies, right? The same M.O. exactly each time, same day of the week, same time of day, same amount of money taken, same gun, same getaway car, same everything except the robbers. They’d always be found later with no money and no memory of what had happened. And there was another weird thing. Eyewitness accounts of each robbery said they had silver eyes, which they didn’t have when they were arrested. So Proxy thought it was worth looking into, especially since we were nearing the day and time of the next robbery. We figured out they were probably possessed by something. She worked out where that robbery would be.” 

“How?” Hawkeye hands Steph a glass of water. 

“No idea how. Tech stuff goes way over my head. Anyway, I get there just in time to see the robber go in. It’s in one of those banks with the fancy floors you can see yourself in. I try to confront them and suddenly the robber doesn’t have silver eyes anymore but one of the cashiers does. Next thing I know, Nick is holding me and asking me to wake up.” Steph drinks. 

Hawkeye takes the glass back. “Who’s Nick?” 

“Detective Gage is my contact in the Gotham Police. You don’t have a Gotham, I checked,” Steph says, faced with Hawkeye’s ‘what is this Gotham you speak of’ eyebrow. “Apparently, I’d been briefly possessed too. “Me and Wendy figured out how the possession worked.” 

“Who’s Wendy?” Hawkeye says, as she leave the room and comes back with another glass of water. There’s a small crack in this one that wasn’t there on the other. Hawkeye is probably running a scan for her DNA as they speak. Damian would never let her hear the end of it. (Damian’s fine - the kid is more unkillable than a cockroach.) 

“Wendy’s Proxy. The possession works by reflection. If you can see the eyes of someone possessed, you can be possessed too,” Steph takes a gulp of water. “Wendy did more Proxy stuff and found out where Simulacrum was holed up. There’s this old mirror factory-slash-warehouse in the middle of Gotham that I had no idea existed. I go there and it’s empty. The cowl has heat vision,” she says, gesturing at her eyes, “I could see no other heat signature. But like, there was this noise, okay? Like the sound of breaking glass. I followed the sound to its source and then I blinked. Only, I saw things when I blinked. So I closed my eyes and I could see the outline of Simulacrum when I was facing a mirror. And then I was possessed, again, and it was very annoying.” 

“I can relate,” Hawkeye says. “How did you get possessed that time?” 

“If you can see its eyes, it can possess you.” Steph tosses the glass from one hand to the next. Her hands are a couple inches from each other so there’s little risk she’d miss or break the glass, but still, it’s a bad habit she’s been trying to break. Besides, it wouldn’t do to break Hawkeye’s glass. You only get one first impression. 

“This sucks,” Hawkeye says. “A thing that can posses you if you can see it and that you can still see if you close your eyes?” 

Steph nods. “What I was thinking was that maybe I could trap it inside mirrors. You know, like how witches can’t stand between two mirrors because it eats their soul?” 

“You have witches in your universe,” Hawkeye says, deadpan, unimpressed and disbelieving. 

They did too! Well, Klarion’s a witch- _boy_ but that’s gotta count for something, right?  
“I got the idea from Discworld,” Stephanie admits. What? Shut up, Alfred loaned them to her. She can’t say no to Alfred, he was the first to believe in her as Robin. (Please be okay, Alfred.) (Who is she kidding, Alfred will butler on through the end of the universe, if need be.) 

Somewhere in the next room, something beeps. Hawkeye gets up and leaves this room. If Steph wants to leave, now’s the time to do it. She can leave now, and... And what? Give up? Hang up the costume, go back to work at the library and hope that next time it’s destroyed she’s not among the victims? (Yeah, she checked. Twenty-seven people have died in that library.) 

She’s many thing but she’s not a quitter. She stays in the room, even though she knows what Hawkeye’s going to say and she hates it already. 

“You don’t exist,” Hawkeye says. Steph might have known what she was about to say, but it still feel like a punch in the gut. 

She’d run that exact same DNA match search, plus a fingerprint match plus a social security number match. Babs’ software had managed to connected to this world’s Internet with surprising ease that wasn’t so surprising if you knew Barbara. 

“Harsh,” she says, then she adds, “way to make a girl feel wanted.” 

Speaking of which, she should be getting on with the identity creating. She’s going to need it for when college starts up again. 

Hawkeye carefully sets down the file she’s been holding since she came back. Her movements are slow and deliberate and it doesn’t take being Cass to know that she is doing it on purpose and wants Steph to know it. 

“Remind me how you ended up here,” Hawkeye says and it isn’t an apology, not exactly, not for anyone who isn’t Damian or Hawkeye. 

Steph accepts it as the apology it isn’t anyway and briefly recounts the place between worlds and what happened there. 

“The mirrors are probably why you and Simulacrum were affected by the reality quake,” Hawkeye says. 

“Wuh,” Steph says, very intelligently. 

“Being between the mirrors at the time is the only thing you have in common,” Hawkeye says. “So it’s the only explanation I can think of.” 

That’s not an explanation, Hawkeye, it’s bullshit reasoning. Not even Zatanna would accept that as a valid explanation, or, well, she might, being Zatanna. Pseudo-mystical magical bullshit is Zatanna’s thing. has Steph mentioned she hates magic yet? Because she does. Zatanna, she likes, though. 

Hawkeye blinks. Did Steph say any of that out loud? She hopes not. She thinks not, either, but when has that ever been an appropriate way to tell? 

Hawkeye sighs. “I’ll try to find where Simulacrum is holed up.” 

Steph waits, but that seems to be it. She leaves through the window. 

The Tuesday after next, Hawkeye contacts her again. And by contact, Steph means that the waffles place now has a tiny, stylised bat being shot with an arrow in the window. 

Haha, very funny. 

She replaces the sign by a parody of Katniss’ pin from the Hunger Games, of a bat catching an arrow. 

The next time she passes by the shop, the bat has the arrow in its feet and is flying over a skyline Steph recognises. It’s the skyline over by 57th and Park. 

Steph is there by nightfall. Hawkeye is not. And continues not to be for a while. Not cool, Hawkeye. Steph says so, when she shows up around midnight. 

“I thought it was obvious the meeting time was midnight. It’s _always_ midnight. Don’t they do that in your universe?” Hawkeye asks. 

She kinda has a point. Meeting at midnight is so much more dramatic than meeting around ten-and-a-half-ish. Say what you want, but at times Steph thinks it’s drama that powers the Bats, more than anything else. 

“I guess not. Sorry,” Hawkeye says. The apology is new. She likes it. 

“Where to?” Steph asks, already on the move. There are few things in life that terrify Steph right down to the marrow of her bones. Black Mask is one, Simulacrum another. The complete loss of control and the absolute knowledge that there is nothing she can do to stop it from doing whatever it wants to or with her body and that she will be screaming behind her eyes until she dies. She told Hawkeye she didn’t remember what happened when she was possessed. It is not a lie. When she is awake, she remembers nothing but the dark beneath her skull. In her nightmares, she remembers every single second of needles tearing in her nerves, of quicksilver running through her veins, making her the latest in a long line of puppets. She remembers, too, the ripples spreading below the surface of the world and the desperate, _desperate_ rush to run away. She remembers it all with perfect, crystalline clarity. 

“The bank,” Hawkeye says. Of course. The Bank of America has a perfect mirror shine on all its facades. It’s the ideal place for someone haunting through reflections. 

As she’s swinging on a line over 5th and 53rd, holding Hawkeye awkwardly in her arm, Steph asks, “Is the Bank of America the right place? Because New York has lots of mirror shiny buildings.” 

“It is.” Hawkeye’s tone is clipped and Stephanie can feel her tense against her body. Steph is not the only with experience of what Simulacrum’s possession feels like from the inside. 

The rest of way is spent in silence. 

The bank is closed, a small sliver of moon reflected on the cloudy windows. They land, silent as shadows in the night. Hawkeye re-adjusts her quiver and off they go. 

Stephanie pointedly does not notice the fact that Hawkeye has a key to the bank. The bank is dead silent. There is a hush, like even the cars outside have stopped. 

And then a voice shatters the silence into shards. 

“Mirror, mirror on the wall,” a woman is saying, far off into the distance, “who’s the most beautiful of all?” 

When she comes into view, more than her eyes are silver. The entire upper part of her face is silver and glowing faintly orange. Trailing down from her eyes are the words she just said, in a beautiful flowing cursive that Stephanie can’t help but admire, no matter how wrong it is to admire the penmanship of a creepy people possessing entity. The words aggregate below the border of silver and the mask descends lower over the woman’s face. 

Stephanie is reminded of the time Calculator tried to kill Oracle. This is worse. There is no Calculator for her to take down. 

“I like this new world,” Simulacrum is saying, “it has brung me so much power. Every mirror ever forged, every tale ever told, every power ever imagined, all just there for me to grab. And there has been so much power,” the final words are hammered out. No words are flowing from her eyes. 

“Every tale ever told, are you for real?” Steph asks. 

“Realer than you’d know,” Simulacrum says. It’s stupid pretending there’s anyone but Simulacrum saying those words and it’s even stupider to kick herself for not realising that none of the victims ever spoke before. She - or it? - starts talking again, and this time the words are silver tears running down her face (definitely hers, Simulacrum has no tangible body), “Hair black as night,” Hawkeye drops to the ground and starts seizing, “skin white as snow,” and now her skin is whiter than the marble, as though the blood is pouring out, “lips red as blood,” through her lips. 

“Hawkeye!” Stephanie shouts. That’s not - she’s not - Steph hasn’t seen anyone lose that much blood since the thing with Black Mask and _let’s not go there, Stephanie_. 

Simulacrum laughs. It sounds nothing like a human laugh. To Steph, it says, “You, as a reminder of home, I like. Just this once, I’ll let you live.” 

It leaves and Stephanie is alone again. 

Okay, Steph, breathe, you can do this, just put pressure on the wound and quote Snow White at it, everything will be okay. Wait, what? 

‘Every tale ever told’, it had said and why should he be the only one to benefit? 

Fuck, how did it go again? 

“Though you my queen are fair ‘tis true,” that’s it, “Snow White is far fairer than you.” Please work, you stupid idea. “Over seventh stream and seventh hill,” Hawkeye looks a little better already, “With seven dwarves, she’s living still.” 

On ‘living still’, Hawkeye’s eyes open and Steph could kiss her from the relief. 

“What happened?” Hawkeye asks, her voice slurred and thick with blood. 

Steph says, “You were Snow White,” as Hawkeye coughs up the last of the blood in her lungs. 

“I’m Kate,” Hawkeye says and that’s how Steph knows she should be taking her straight to the hospital. Hawkeye - Kate - has never expressed any desire to share her secret identity. 

“My name’s Stephanie,” she says, because she’s done the whole ‘one of us knows the other’s secret identity but not the other’ song and dance with Tim and she is not doing that again, not even from the other side. “You need a hospital.” 

“No hospitals,” Kate says. Then she adds, rather unconvincingly, “I’m fine.” 

Steph isn’t sure what a hospital would be able to do. There’s no wound for them to dress. A blood transfusion, maybe? 

“Waffle time!” Steph says. Food is needed for the replenishing of blood supply. Red meat is best, but good luck finding a diner open in the area at this time of night. 

Hawkeye is looking better, but she still says, “Rain check.” 

That’s the end of that, for a while. 

One night, when Steph looks to the stars, the Batsignal is shining, bold as anything over the New York skyline. 

She finds Hawkeye in their usual place. “You got me a Batsignal?” 

“I got you a Batsignal. Also, coffee,” Hawkeye says. She looks good and not at all like someone who was coughing up blood a short while ago. 

Steph takes the coffee. “We’re going after Simulacrum again?” 

Hawkeye’s voice is pointed. “Yes, and this time it’s personal.” 

They don’t find Simulacrum at the bank. They keep searching, going through every nook and cranny of it, but it isn’t there. 

“Snow White, you said?” Kate is not looking at Stephanie. “How did you save me?” 

“More Snow White,” Steph says, as irrational as that is. It’s her story and she’s sticking to it. “I quoted from the version my mom used to tell when I was a kid. It’s the bit where the mirror tells the queen...” Stephanie trails off. 

Everything that Simulacrum has said that showed on its face, every word that had power came from the tale and was centered around the mirror. 

“You have superpowers?” Kate sounds a bit disappointed. 

“No! I mean, I didn’t at home, I think this is just an effect of having been possessed there, like a link exists between Simulacrum and me, so I can use a bit of its power? I don’t know,” Steph says. It doesn’t sound very convincing aloud, or even in her head. “Do you remember anything about your possession?” 

Hawkeye flinches visibly away from Steph. “I remember nothing and don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Okay.” Steph can definitely understand that. “I think I can feel what the host is feeling when I’m sleeping,” Steph says. And there hadn’t been any other repeat victims either as far as anyone could tell. “Maybe if I concentrate, I’ll be able to tell where they are?” 

“How very... Dracula of you,” Kate says. 

“You know it is,” Steph says with a truly ridiculous accent. “It’s all work, work, work all the time.” 

Kate has that look on her face that says ‘let me tell you all about the ways in which Dracula didn’t have an accent in the book’. Steph is not sitting on another train for Lectureville, Nickpickania. 

“Just let me try, alright? What’s the worst that could happen?” In retrospect, that should have been a warning sign. She should know better by now. You never tempt fate, not ever; she has a mean sense of humour and a killer right hook. 

Steph blacks out. 

The lights are blinding. 

“So?” Hawkeye asks. “Did it work?” 

“No,” Stephanie says. She is lying. 

Hawkeye narrows her eyes behind her sunglasses. It makes her face scrunch up unattractively. “Are you sure, Mina?” 

“Yes. My name is not Mina. It is Stephanie,” Stephanie says. 

Hawkeye takes a step forward. She holds out her arm. Stephanie grips it. When she is up, Hawkeye does not let go and says, “You’re not Stephanie.” 

She punches Stephanie in the stomach. She brings her hand up and drives the heel of her palm into her mouth. Stephanie recoils. Stephanie smiles. The blood on her teeth is silver. 

“Indeed, I am not Stephanie. You have found me out but it does not matter. You can not stop me,” says the monster wearing Steph’s face. 

“Like hell she can’t!” Steph is shouting; but inside your head, like in space, no one can hear you scream. 

“How are you doing this?” Kate asks. She’s visibly angry, but Steph doesn’t care. Kate figured out she wasn’t herself. Kate cares enough to notice when Steph isn’t herself. It’s a great feeling. 

Steph can’t do anything. She might, however, be able to stop Simulacrum from doing anything themselves. 

“There once was a most wicked magician,” Simulacrum is saying with Steph’s mouth and silver runs down her throat. 

“The Snow Queen,” Kate says and starts quoting, “ ‘all around them glowed bright summer, warm, glorious summer’.” 

Kate‘s words seem to run interference with Simulacrum’s and the silver stops. It recedes into the deepest corners of Steph’s mind. Just before it leaves, Simulacrum says to Steph, “Be glad I let you live.” 

It’s not the words that stay with Steph, it’s the fear tainting them. 

“We’re doing something right,” she tells Kate. 

“You being used as a puppet by villain with a creepy obsession with fairytales is not doing it right,” Kate says. 

Steph smiles. The blood on her teeth is red. “It is when it’s scared of us.” 

Kate smiles back. “It’s dark and I’m wearing sunglasses. Let’s go.” 

_Let’s_. 

“Every fairytale Simulacrum’s quoted so far involves a mirror,” Kate says as they run down the street. 

Spider-Man swings by and says, “Kate!” 

When he drops to the ground, he briefly turns green before becoming a blond young man. 

“Not now, Ted.” Kate stabs a finger in his direction, “Quick, name one fairy tale with a mirror in it.” 

“Don’t say Snow White,” Steph says. 

Ted-Spider-man says, “Bloody Mary? Kate, what does this have to do with anything?” 

Steph played the game of summoning Bloody Mary when she was a child. A lot of people have. Enough people to fuel a murdering psycho on the hunt for a new body? More than enough by half. 

Ted is continuing, “There’s also the basilisk and Medusa.” 

Basilisk. This world has Harry Potter and it is just as much of a runaway success as it is in Steph’s. Add to that the power of myth and _they are so fucked._

Belief is the key to this thing. Steph doesn’t know why but for now all the power and belief held in tales is up for grabs. 

There is a crack in the skin of the world. Cracks are for things to come out and things to come it. 

“I have an idea,” Steph says. 

Kate tells Ted to text her. Steph and Kate run off. 

“We try your mirror thing again?” Kate asks. “People have believed that mirrors stole souls for a long time.” 

“I was just thinking we could do the Bloody Mary thing and summon it, but that works too,” Steph says. 

When they stop running, they’ve ended up in front of Kate’s lair. Awesome. Kate has enough heroes in her phonebook to keep things under control. 

“You set the mirrors,” Kate says, “I’ll program a message for Wanda, Strange and Doom. Just in case.” 

The weird thing about that sentence isn’t that Kate apparently has Doctor Doom’s phone number, but that Doom and Strange are the guys’ actual names. No wonder they turned out to be supervillains. Kate keeps insisting Strange isn’t a supervillain. Steph’s not convinced. 

“Why Doctor Doom?” Steph asks as she sets the mirrors. Kate has floor length mirrors in her lair. Steph isn’t even going to ask her about that. 

“I’m just contacting anyone with magical powers who’s still in the hero-and-villain scene,” Kate says. 

“Is the hero-and-villain scene anything like the BDSM scene?” Steph says. 

Kate says, “There’s a lot of masks involved in both.” 

Steph laughs. She’s done with the mirrors and gives Kate a thumbs up. 

“Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary,” Kate says, to no avail. She repeats it, this time adding, “I killed your baby”. Folklore, man. She then moves on to “Kathy, come out!” 

The mirrors ripple. The shadow of a woman forms in the space between. When she solidifies, it’s the woman from the bank, wearing a mirror mask over her entire face. 

That’s not a good sign. 

Kate and Steph shove the mirrors into position. The mirrors line up perfectly but nothing happens to Simulacrum. 

“Did you really think this would stop me?” it says. It isn’t moving. 

“No,” Steph says. “But this might.” 

In unison, Steph and Kate say, “I don’t believe in Mary Worth.” 

Simulacrum vibrates. “Still not enough. You really don’t get it, do you? You cannot stop me. Far more people believe in me than not. There’s a hole in the world and its power fills me. I do not know what you have been doing to this universe that it is leaking power so, but I will take it. I will take your M-days and your Phoenixes, your resurrections and your lives, all your pretty lies made into truth, your fears brought into the light, the reflected darkness of your souls.” 

“Please shut up,” Steph says. She really hates the Pointless Villainous Monologue ™. (Not to be confused with the Expository Villainous Monologue. Those are boring too but at least you get intel out of them.) 

“How about this,” Kate says and her voice echoes back and forth across the room. Acoustic mirroring, how smart. Go Kate. 

Simulacrum fades in and out. A crack is forming where it stands. Stephanie has seen that crack many times in her head, trying to find a meaning to it. She hasn’t had any luck so far. Not in the time beyond time in the place beyond place, not in the small hours of the night. It’s the crack in the shape of the world. 

Simulacrum opens its mouth to speak and holy fuck, from where Steph is standing, its teeth look like knives, triangles of glintering steel. 

Steph is not going through the whole villain monologue again. She punches Simulacrum in the face, hard. What? It worked for Superboy. But she’s not Superboy and it doesn’t work for her. 

Whatever, man. 

She tackles Simulacrum through the widening gyre of the weakness in the skin of the universe. 

(Point to gravity, and Stephanie. Stephanie: 2, Gravity: 2) 

The endless white beyond reality is as blinding as ever. 

Steph lets go of Simulacrum. A silver liquid is oozing out of the woman. It forms perfectly spherical bubbles, the way orange juice in those astronaut videos does. 

The bubbles link up into a bigger bubble. 

The woman’s face is serene. Her eyes are closed and she is unmoving. 

“Don’t bother,” Simulacrum says, as Steph goes to check whether the woman is okay. “She’s already dead.” 

Steph ignores it. It can go possess someone else for all she cares. 

The woman has no pulse. Then again, neither did Steph the first she did the between-universes rigmarole. Steph slaps her. 

The woman does not wake. 

“Try true love’s kiss,” Simulacrum says, “that always works.” 

“Tell me about your evil plan,” Steph says, because Simulacrum’s use of sarcasm is even weirder than its monologues. “What was up with stealing all that money?” 

The bubble that is Simulacrum has been shaping itself into a rough human shape. “I was going to buy myself a body.” 

Steph can’t tell whether this is really sad or _really really creepy._ She’s going for creepy. “You can’t just buy yourself a body.” 

“You can if you’ve got enough money.” Simulacrum now looks almost identical to the woman in Steph’s arms. It’s only the way it’s still made of silver stuff that differentiates them. “Although,” and here Simulacrum looks at its hand, turning it this say and that, rippling it into various shapes, one of which Steph is fairly sure is her hand, holy shit, “I don’t think I’ll need to anymore. This is,” a pause and the Steph-hand turns into a Steph-arm, “new.” 

“This is creepy enough without you looking like a silver-plated version of me,” Steph says. 

“I have a body now,” Simulacrum says, sounding a bit shell-shocked. Simulacrum shifts again, going through forms, finally settling on one. It’s a composite. Here is Kate’s jawline, Steph’s eyes, the woman’s hair... 

“That’s great, buddy,” Steph says. “Don’t think this means you’re off the hook. You’ve stolen, you’ve practically killed Hawkeye.” Steph props up the woman, “You might have killed her.”  Her hand brushes against the crack-that-is-Hawkeye’s-universe. It’s spiky. 

“I’m not going back,” Simulacrum says. It launches out into the space-between. 

Steph can’t pursue, not without letting the woman go. She’s unconscious and Steph has no idea if she’d be able to find her again in the void. 

Steph is Steph, saving people is more important to her than catching criminals. 

She runs her hand along the crack, sliding her nail under a tiny flip of it. She pulls on it and it unravels. 

Steph jumps through the crack, comatose woman in one hand, fragments of universe trailing behind her. 

Steph flies out into the night. Over the New York skyline and Kate’s Batsignal, a million million motes of lights in all the colours Steph’s ever imagined (and then some) shine out like the aurora borealis. When she lets go of the fabric of the universe, light unfolds across the night sky. 

Steph sticks the landing. 

(Stephanie: 3; Gravity: 2)  



End file.
